Accenture and BEA Systems, Inc. have announced the opening of the Accenture Innovation Center for BEA located at BEA headquarters in San Jose, Calif.

At the center, clients will be able to work with Accenture and BEA teams to create new solutions-such as service-oriented architectures and dynamic business applications-to enhance organizational performance and flexibility.

"We're launching the center with BEA on the strength of our history of delivering quantifiable results for our shared clients," said Don Rippert, chief technology officer, Accenture. "By formalizing the work we've done with BEA into tangible assets and by providing our clients with first-hand access to these assets, we can give them all the benefits of innovation and 'speed to market' with reduced risk."

The Accenture Innovation Center for BEA, headed by Robert Calloway, lead of Accenture's SOA practice in North America, will provide a collaborative environment for testing conceptual solutions and expanded uses of BEA technology. The center will offer clients access to:

·         Industry-based integration and business process management assets that helped companies like Pacific Gas and Electric Company leverage today's technology to achieve desired business process improvements such as new revenue opportunities, stronger data integrity and increased process visibility for all in the organization;

·         Accenture and BEA experts who focus on engineering each client's unique business processes, rather than changing business processes to conform with ERP system templates; and

·         Integrated business process management (BPM) best practices to help reduce clients' risk, cost and time investments.

"Accenture and BEA have had great success developing game-changing solutions together largely because both of our organizations believe in focusing on our clients' core business first, and technology second," said David Gai, executive vice president, Worldwide Services, BEA Systems. "This center provides a great opportunity for organizations to leverage Accenture's and BEA's deep industry and technology expertise in order to maximize their IT investment with demonstrated business results."

Accenture and BEA have together developed 15-industry-focused prototypes, including the Accenture SOA Reference Architecture for the BEA Platform and the Accenture Service Delivery Platform Solution. The former simplifies and accelerates the process of designing applications based on service-oriented architecture, while the latter provides an integration platform for companies in the communications industry.

About Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Committed to delivering innovation, Accenture collaborates with its clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With deep industry and business process expertise, broad global resources and a proven track record, Accenture can mobilize the right people, skills and technologies to help clients improve their performance. With approximately 170,000 people in 49 countries, the company generated net revenues of $19.7 billion for the fiscal year ending Aug. 31, 2007. Learn more at http://www.accenture.com/.

About BEA

BEA Systems, Inc. is a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software. It helps customers build a "Liquid Enterprise" that can transform their business. Information about how BEA can be found at http://www.bea.com.